1. Masks the problem—western donors shut down free speech
Baffour Ankomah, editor of New African, Oct 5
(Zimbabwe: why Western donors cannot stand free speech, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4824212/Zimbabwe-why-Western-donors-cannot.html)
It is quite ironic that those who purport to teach Africans democracy and the virtues of free speech cannot themselves stand the sight of free-thinking Africans practising what democracy and free speech enjoin them to do.To the almighty "donors" who now holdAfricain thrall, democracy appears to mean doing what they want Africans to do, and free speech saying what they want Africans to say. Any contravention of this hypocritical diktat attracts the imposition of sanctions from on high. This was the ridiculous situation that was forced upon the organisers of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZIBF) in early August when Western donors, angered by the poor performance of their trusted speakers, hit the roof over the invitation extended to me (Baffour Ankomah) as the rapporteur general of the two-day conference (called Indaba) that precedes the book fair. An indaba, in the context of Southern African tradition, is a gathering of the kings, chiefs and people of the land to discuss pertinent matters of state, an occasion of unfettered free speech. For Western donors, it appears to mean another thing altogether.
2. Inevitable—African Media IFEX.org, 6
(http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/80493/0
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) is alarmed by the increasing number of violations against journalists and media rights inWest Africa. In 2006 alone, the MFWA recorded 168 cases of violations in fifteen of the sixteen countries in the region, compared to 148 attacks registered in 2005. Nigeria tops the list with 32 cases of abuse of press freedom rights, representing 19 % of the overall number. Gambia, the country with the smallest population and land size, follows with 27 cases of abuses (16 %). Of the remaining 67 %, Liberia had 20, representing 12%. Ghana is fourth on the list with 18 cases (11 %). Côte d'Ivoire and Niger recorded 15 cases, each representing 8%. Guinea-Conakry followed with 11 cases, making 7 %. Sierra Leone, Senegal and Benin followed with 8 (5%), 7 (4%) and 6 (3%) respectively. The last set of countries, ranging from 2-0.5 % were Togo, 3 (2%), Mali 2 (1%), Guinea Bissau 2 (1%), Burkina Faso 1 (0.5%) and Mauritania 1 (0.5%). In Nigeria, an editor was murdered at the end of 2006. Cape Verde is the only country that registered no cases of violations of press freedom. The MFWA notes that this compilation may not include violations that may not have been noticed, observed or reported. It is likely that some of the areas with low cases may have been poorly monitored. And even for those countries where there appears to be more reported cases, not all may actually have been captured, especially if they occurred outside the capitals and cities.
U.S. Hypocrisy
Stephen Lendman, Journalist for Populist America, 5-29
(The War on Free Speech, http://www.populistamerica.com/the_war_on_free_speech_part_iv)
In addition, this scheme and all other Bush administration assaults on First Amendment freedoms make a sham out of the president's galling hypocrisy May 3 on World Press Freedom Day. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported he denounced (with effrontery) a host of other countries for their lack of press freedom including China, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Russia, Belarus and Venezuela (all US targets for daring to place their own sovereignty above ours) saying "The United States values freedom of the press as one of the most fundamental political rights and as a necessary component of free societies" except whenever the press anywhere dares criticize his wars of aggression and other repressive, unjust and illegal policies. That's the way things are by the rules of George Bush's Global War on Terror (GWOT) rebranded The Long War about to undergo another rebranding because the current name denotes the wrong message of endless wars and occupation the public is tiring of. The name may change, but the mission won't so long as George Bush remains president. According to him, opposition to his wars gives aid and comfort to the nation's enemies that's tantamount to treason. So is dissent and any criticism of his agenda by his reasoning but not according to the law of the land.
3. Free speech restrictions are inevitable and prevent racial slurs. The Aff’s deployment of free speech ignores these cultural distinctions and marginalizes groups.
Stanley Fish, Duke University Professor of Law, 94
(http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-February-1998/fish.html)
In your work you have stated that free speech must be understood against a background of the originary exclusion which gives it meaning. What are the conditions giving rise to this originary exclusion? A: Before I got into the First Amendment or free speech business I was for many years and still am a teacher of English Renaissance poetry and prose, especially that of John Milton. Milton's contribution to the history of the discussion of free speech and censorship is of course the Areopagitica, published in 1643, a vigorous and eloquent protest against a licencing law passed by the parliament. Much of the Areopagitica is a celebration of toleration in matters of expression, for reasons that have now become more familiar to us: the more information the better able are we to choose wisely; the more information the better are we able to exercise our intellects so that they become more refined and perceptive. Another part of Milton's argument is that when something is suppressed it does not go away. It just takes on a romantic underground life and flourishes rather than being brought to the light of day where it might be refuted. All of these are today familiar arguments and components of free speech rhetoric. There is one part, however, of Milton's Areopagitica that is rarely noticed in such discussions and when noticed is noticed with some embarrassment. About three quarters of the way through the tract Milton says, "Now you understand of course", and the tone in his prose suggests that he assumes that most of his readers have always understood this, "that when I speak of toleration and free expression I don't mean Catholics. Them we extirpate". 1 Milton's admirers, especially those who have linked him to John Stuart Mill as one of the cornerstones of the free speech tradition, have difficulty with this passage and attempt to explain it away by saying that Milton, because of the limitation of his own historical period, was not able to see what we are able to see. The idea is that our conception of free speech is more capacious, more truly free, than this because we do not have an exclusion up our sleeves, ready to be sprung. But the difference between Milton and us is a difference in what we would exclude from the zone of "free speech", not a difference between exclusion and inclusion. When Milton names Catholic discourse as the exception to his toleration he does so because in his view Catholic speech is subversive of everything speech, in general, is supposed to do -- keep the conversation going, continue the search for Truth. In short, if speech is really to be free in the sense that he desires, Catholics cannot be allowed freely to produce it. This might seem paradoxical, but in fact it is Milton's recognition of a general condition: free speech is what's left over when you have determined which forms of speech cannot be permitted to flourish. The "free speech zone" emerges against the background of what has been excluded. Everyone begins by assuming what shouldn't be said; otherwise there would be no point to saying anything. Another example: one of the foremost proponents of free speech in this country is Nat Hentoff, a journalist well known for his jazz criticism and who has also taken up the cause of free speech no matter how disreputable or offensive the speech in question. But about two years ago he recanted, when he drew the line at campuses allowing certain forms of anti-semitic speech to flourish. Disciples of a certain Muslim group came to campuses and began to talk about "bagel eating vermin who had escaped from caves in the middle ages and were now, as then, infecting the world". Hentoff said this has gone too far. My point is that everyone has such a trigger point, which is either acknowledged at the beginning or emerges in a moment of crisis. There is no-one who believes that everything should be said. Most of us today would not say, "Well, of course, you understand I don't mean toleration of Catholics". But we would say things like, "I don't mean toleration of neo-nazis" or "I don't mean toleration of discourses advocating child molestation".
1. Democracy promotion fails—Oil prices
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme)
Second, the high price of oil and gas is bolstering the position of many non-democratic governments around the world, especially in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East but also inAfrica and Latin America. Almost all oil-rich states outside Europe and North America are autocratic; the surge of oil and gas revenues they are currently enjoying is helping strengthen their hand at home. Moreover, some of these governments, particularly those in Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, are taking advantage of this revenue windfall to fund their own cross-border political work. They are passing money to political allies or favorites to help influence the domestic politics of nearby countries in ways they hope will be favorable to their own interests. More than almost any other single factor, a significantly lower price of oil would be a tremendous boost to the fortunes of democracy abroad.
2. Chinese success
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme)
Third, again for the first time since the end of the Cold War, democracy no longer enjoys an unchallenged place on the international scene as the only political system viewed as successful and credible. China’s continued economic success has elevated the “strong-hand” political approach to managing economic development as an attractive model in many parts of the developing world. Authoritarian leaders in the Middle East, Asia, and elsewhere justify their repressive tactics by citing the Chinese example. Citizens in some countries with poor development records show a willingness to sacrifice some of their freedoms for the possibility of better economic development. Although Russia’s recent economic growth is substantially due to high energy prices, President Putin’s has received much of the credit for it, bolstering his popularity and contributing to the growing appeal of the strong-hand political model.
3. Military abuses
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme)
Fourth, the status of the United States as a symbol of democracy and as a leading promoter of democracy has been greatly damaged by the abuses committed by U.S. military and intelligence personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere, as well as by other elements of the war on terrorism, such as the secret rendition of foreign terrorism suspects to countries that regularly practice torture, reliable reports of covert prisons in Europe, and governmental eavesdropping without court warrants within the United States. The damage toAmerica’s image has been enormous, a fact that is plainly and painfully obvious to anyone who is internationally aware either abroad or at home, but which the administration refuses to acknowledge. The widespread perception that the war on terrorism entails the frequent violation of individuals’ rights by theU.S.government sharply contradicts President Bush’s efforts to tell the world that liberty is the best antidote for terrorism.
4. Terrorist Successes
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme)
Fifth, a narrower development, but one that goes to the heart of the U.S. push for democracy abroad, is the success of Islamist groups in two recent elections in theMiddle East, inEgyptand the Palestinian territories. The surprisingly strong showing ofEgypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the victory of Hamas reopened old debates about whether democratization in theMiddle Eastmight actually be harmful to American interests by allowing Islamists parties or groups to come to power. Some commentators and some quiet voices in the U.S. government have reacted by urging the administration to retreat from its embrace of a democracy agenda for the Middle East. The United States now faces some very hard choices about whether to sacrifice its commitment to democracy for the sake of opposing political forces it believes are dangerous to U.S. interests.
5. Democratic transitions spark regional wars and ethnic conflicts
P.T. Zeleza, Director of the Center for African Studies, 5-18-7
(The Struggle for Human Rights in Africa, http://zeleza.com/blogging/african-affairs/struggle-human-rights-africa) More difficult to decipher and quite contentious in the literature is the impact of democratization on human rights. It is generally agreed that democracies are less repressive than autocracies. The positive correlation between democracy and respect for human rights is based on the assumption that democratic leaders are more accountable to their citizens and that coercive agents within democratic states not only wield less power than other competitive groups, but the availability of less coercive means of conflict regulation (such as elections) provides both a constraining factor and a preferable option. But the effects of democratization (the moment of transition from autocracy to democracy) on political repression are more complex. It has been demonstrated in many instances that repression may actually increase in new democracies because of lagging repressive tendencies from the past and the propensity for protest behavior to increase at such times. Some call this the “more murder in the middle hypothesis. ” Many of these analyses tend to focus on the state as the progenitor of human rights terror and repression. The role of civil society in engendering human rights violations is quite critical and even more so during democratic transitions when centrifugal pressures can intensify as long suppressed group conflicts and identities find release in the newly opened political spaces where they sometimes proceed to produce and perform their chauvinisms and antagonisms, both real and imagined. Keen to shore up its power and authority the state often becomes embroiled in the volatile vortex of conflicting group claims and struggles, in the process of which repression can increase that may ultimately abort the democratization process itself or threaten the very integrity of the nation-state. Africaoffers numerous examples of escalating conflicts and human rights violations since the recent wave of democratic transitions began in the 1990s. Ethnicity has proven particularly salient as the most lethal social cleavage engendering conflict and repression. Since colonial times, ethnicity has embodied both moral and political imperatives; moral ethnicity constitutes a complex web of social obligations, loyalties and belonging, whereas political ethnicity is manifested in the mobilization of ethnicity—the proverbial “tribalism”—in intra-elite struggles for state power. In the formulations of Peter Ekeh and Mahmood Mamdani ethnicity is integral to Africa’s bifurcated civil society; it serves as a primordial public for the masses estranged from the civic public of the elites, a sanctuary that extends its comforts and protective tentacles to the victims of political disenfranchisement, economic impoverishment, state terror and group rivalry. As the suffocating lid of state tyranny is lifted during moments of democratic transition the suppressed voices and expectations of civil society surge, but the stresses and strains arising from the competitive grind of democracy often find articulation in the entrenched identities, idioms, and institutions of ethnic solidarity. The case ofNigeriais quite illustrative in this regard. The democratic opening of 1999 has been accompanied by the resurgence of ethnic identities and proliferation of regional and local struggles over the entitlements of citizenship expressed in the language of “indigenes” and “settlers. ” These struggles have increasingly spilled into the formation of ethnic militias that have wrought havoc onNigeria’s civil society, unleashing periodic convulsions of inter-communal violence. Long a country with a militarized state, the militias are militarizing society and helping to expand the culture of violence that is inimical to human rights and development. Religious conflicts have also periodically erupted into communal violence.
6. Don’t solve—Iraq and color revolutions
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme)
First, suspicion about and resistance toU.S.democracy promotion activities in developing countries and postcommunist countries is at an all-time high. Democracy building work has long been greeted with skepticism abroad by persons unsure about the true motivations of democracy promoters and wary of what sometimes appears to them as foreign-sponsored political interference. But a combination of two different developments in the past several years has greatly increased such negative attitudes around the world: • The Bush administration’s emphasis on the Iraq war as the leading wedge of its democracy promotion policy in the Middle East has closely associated democracy promotion with the assertion of American military power and security interests. With the U.S. intervention in Iraq viewed as illegitimate in most parts of the world, the legitimacy of the general concept of democracy promotion has suffered accordingly. • The recent “color revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan have also contributed to growing global unease about democracy promotion. The dramatic, inspiring political breakthroughs in these countries were an important advance for democracy. Yet as accounts of U.S. support for key civic and political opposition groups in these countries spread, so too did the incorrect but seductive idea that the United States was the shadowy guiding hand behind those events. Although these two developments—the Iraq war and the color revolutions—were unconnected, their coincidence has caused many authoritarian and semiauthoritarian governments to take a new, much harder look at U.S. democracy promotion activities on their territory. Many governments have started actively pushing back against democracy assistance, arguing that blocking such programs is necessary to defend their national security against what they portray as aUnited Statesbent on carrying out regime change against governments it does not like.
7. Russian backlash
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme) Although this new pushback against democracy promotion is occurring in many places, including Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the most concerted resistance is coming fromRussia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has mounted a major campaign against Western democracy promotion, not only taking a series of punitive measures to limit the activities of Western democracy groups in Russia but also encouraging neighboring governments, especially those in Central Asia, to do the same. Non-democratic governments have often put up obstacles to democracy promotion. This is the first time since the Cold War, however, that a major government hasmade such a systematic and public campaign against democracy aid and worked across borders to enlist other governments in the cause. The fact that the campaign is originating not from a hostile government but from one of the United States’s G-8 partners is especially significant.
1. Plan ignores cultural distinctions turning gender violence
Joanna Crichton, African Population and Health Research Centre, 6-22-6
(Sexual and reproductive health rights in Africa, http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0140673606689034)
Subsequent discussion among participants explored the intersections and disconnections between the three dimensions. Examples from wide-ranging professional experience showed how the intersection between social and personal aspects of sexual and reproductive health rights is particularly crucial inAfrica, in which such rights are often mediated by claimed cultural norms and beliefs and by household and community relationships that are influenced by gender. One government official noted how interventions aiming to empower women to negotiate over sex in westernKenyaresulted in gender-based violence because the interventions failed to address social norms and expectations about the roles of men and women in sexual relationships. This discussion resonated with research findings from the region, which highlight how sexual and reproductive health rights are constrained by sexual identities, such as ideas about maleness and femaleness, which themselves are shaped by poverty.7, 8 and 9 Participants concluded that younger and older men should be involved in all research, advocacy, and action on sexual and reproductive health rights.
2. Women and men ignore health services
Ann K. Blanc, Principal Demographic Expert Macro International, 1
(The Effect of Power in Sexual Relationships on Sexual and Reproductive Health: An Examination of the Evidence,http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0039-3665%28200109%2932%3A3%3C189%3ATEOPIS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G)
Where men generally control resources and women's mobility, women may have difficulty using reproductive health services when they need them and, when they use such services, they may find it hard to make choices that are appropriate for their situation. This circumstance does not mean that men are purposely denying women health care. Their ignorance of women's reproductive health may lead them to have incorrect assumptions and to make uninformed decisions (Helzner 1996). One reason for men's ignorance is that their primary source of information is often other men, who are generally just as uninformed as they are (AVSC and IPPFI WHR 1998a). A study conducted in Uttar Pradesh, India, found that only about half of husbands surveyedcould name even one sign of a dangerous condition during pregnancy or childbirth. Moreover, many husbands surveyed with symptoms of STDs did not seek treatment. Presumably these men lack an awareness of the possible consequences of their disease to their wives (Singh et al. 1998). Researchers conducting an intervention in Ahmedabad, India, intended to involve men in early childhood development learned that the belief is widespread that women should not eat too much during pregnancy in order to have a small baby and hence an easier delivery. Those who control food allocation within the household (that is, husbands and mothersin- law), therefore, discourage pregnant women from eating, putting their health and the health of the baby at risk (Raju and Leonard 2000).
3. Property Rights guts solvency Human Rights Watch, 3
(http://hrw.org/campaigns/women/property/) Millions of women around the world suffer abuses of their equal rights to own, inherit, manage, and dispose of property. These violations are degrading, discriminatory, and sometimes deadly. After their property rights are violated, many women end up impoverished, struggling to meet their families’ basic needs, living in decaying shacks in dangerous slums, and vulnerable to violence and disease—including HIV/AIDS. In sub-SaharanAfrica, violations of women’s property rights are severe and pervasive. The tragedy of these violations is magnified by HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, where the epidemic is raging and where 58 percent of those infected with HIV are women. In many African countries, women are excluded from inheriting, evicted from their lands and homes by in-laws, stripped of their possessions, and forced to engage in risky sexual practices in order to keep their property—all because they are women. When they divorce or separate from their husbands, they are frequently expelled from their homes with only their clothing. Married women can seldom stop their husbands from selling family property. Women who fight back are often beaten, raped, or ostracized. A number of factors contribute to these violations. Chief among them are discriminatory laws and customs, biased attitudes, unresponsive authorities, ineffective courts, and other obstacles, such as the social stigma of being branded “greedy women” or “traitors of custom” if women assert their property rights.
4. Acid Burning and Dowry Deaths Amnesty International, 7
(http://www.amnestyusa.org/Womens_Human_Rights/Violence/page.do?id=1108440&n1=3&n2=39&n3=739)
Women's subjugation to men is pervasive in the political, civil, social, cultural, and economic spheres of many countries. In such societies, a woman who turns down a suitor or does not get along with her in-laws far too frequently becomes a victim of a violent form of revenge: acid burning. Acid is thrown in her face or on her body and can blind her in addition to often fatal third-degree burns. Governments do little to prevent the sale of acid to the public or to punish those who use it to kill and maim. Similarly, the ongoing reality of dowry-related violence is an example of what can happen when women are treated as property. Brides unable to pay the high "price" to marry are punished by violence and often death at the hands of their in-laws or their own husbands.
5. "Honor" Killings Amnesty International, 7
(http://www.amnestyusa.org/Womens_Human_Rights/Violence/page.do?id=1108440&n1=3&n2=39&n3=739)
In some societies, women are often looked upon as representatives of the honor of the family. When women are suspected of extra-marital sexual relations, even if in the case of rape, they can be subjected to the cruelest forms of indignity and violence, often by their own fathers or brothers. Women who are raped and are unable to provide explicit evidence, are sometimes accused of zina, or the crime of unlawful sexual relations, the punishment for which is often death by public stoning. Such laws serve as a great obstacle inhibiting women from pursuing cases against those who raped them. Assuming an accused woman's guilt, male family members believe that they have no other means of undoing a perceived infringement of "honor" other than to kill the woman.
6. Dichotomies in human rights discourse means governments fail to protect rights
P.T. Zeleza, Director of the Center for African Studies, 5-18-7
(The Struggle for Human Rights in Africa, http://zeleza.com/blogging/african-affairs/struggle-human-rights-africa) The contexts and conditions examined above make it quite difficult for the promotion and protection of human rights. The problematic nature of human rights is of course not confined to the practice of human rights, but is inherent in the very definition, the discourses of human rights. The tendency has been to divide human rights, to valorize some and dismiss others. I believe, quite strongly, that it is futile and unproductive to seal rights in strict confinements, to sequester them in dichotomies and polarities, for all forms of human rights are ultimately interrelated, interdependent, and indivisible. As I have noted at length elsewhere, human rights discourses often suffer from four analytical traps. They tend to be idealistic, legalistic, dualistic, and ethnocentric; idealistic in that human rights are reduced to ideas abstracted from social history, so that they are seen as the outcome of concepts not conflicts, insights not instigations, philosophy not politics; legalistic in that their provenance is primarily located in the courts not culture, procedure not practice, rhetoric not reality, codes not contingency; dualistic in that they either polarize or prioritize civil and political rights against economic and social rights and vice-versa; and ethnocentric in that their source is usually located in the West by both the universalists and relativists. The simple truth of the matter is that human rights have evolved out of concrete historical conditions and struggles, not simply textual or legal disputations, and they will continue to do so as human societies and needs change and new challenges and threats emerge, and there is no intrinsic reason that one set of rights—political and civil or economic and cultural rights—is inherently superior in promoting and protecting human dignity. In short, the internationalization and universalization of human rights is an ongoing process to which all world regions and cultures will continue to make contributions.
1. Masks the problem—western donors shut down free speech
Baffour Ankomah, editor of New African, Oct 5
(Zimbabwe: why Western donors cannot stand free speech, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4824212/Zimbabwe-why-Western-donors-cannot.html)
It is quite ironic that those who purport to teach Africans democracy and the virtues of free speech cannot themselves stand the sight of free-thinking Africans practising what democracy and free speech enjoin them to do. To the almighty "donors" who now hold Africa in thrall, democracy appears to mean doing what they want Africans to do, and free speech saying what they want Africans to say. Any contravention of this hypocritical diktat attracts the imposition of sanctions from on high. This was the ridiculous situation that was forced upon the organisers of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZIBF) in early August when Western donors, angered by the poor performance of their trusted speakers, hit the roof over the invitation extended to me (Baffour Ankomah) as the rapporteur general of the two-day conference (called Indaba) that precedes the book fair. An indaba, in the context of Southern African tradition, is a gathering of the kings, chiefs and people of the land to discuss pertinent matters of state, an occasion of unfettered free speech. For Western donors, it appears to mean another thing altogether.
2. Inevitable—African Media
IFEX.org, 6
(http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/80493/0
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) is alarmed by the increasing number of violations against journalists and media rights in West Africa. In 2006 alone, the MFWA recorded 168 cases of violations in fifteen of the sixteen countries in the region, compared to 148 attacks registered in 2005. Nigeria tops the list with 32 cases of abuse of press freedom rights, representing 19 % of the overall number. Gambia, the country with the smallest population and land size, follows with 27 cases of abuses (16 %). Of the remaining 67 %, Liberia had 20, representing 12%. Ghana is fourth on the list with 18 cases (11 %). Côte d'Ivoire and Niger recorded 15 cases, each representing 8%. Guinea-Conakry followed with 11 cases, making 7 %. Sierra Leone, Senegal and Benin followed with 8 (5%), 7 (4%) and 6 (3%) respectively. The last set of countries, ranging from 2-0.5 % were Togo, 3 (2%), Mali 2 (1%), Guinea Bissau 2 (1%), Burkina Faso 1 (0.5%) and Mauritania 1 (0.5%). In Nigeria, an editor was murdered at the end of 2006. Cape Verde is the only country that registered no cases of violations of press freedom. The MFWA notes that this compilation may not include violations that may not have been noticed, observed or reported. It is likely that some of the areas with low cases may have been poorly monitored. And even for those countries where there appears to be more reported cases, not all may actually have been captured, especially if they occurred outside the capitals and cities.
U.S. Hypocrisy
Stephen Lendman, Journalist for Populist America, 5-29
(The War on Free Speech, http://www.populistamerica.com/the_war_on_free_speech_part_iv)
In addition, this scheme and all other Bush administration assaults on First Amendment freedoms make a sham out of the president's galling hypocrisy May 3 on World Press Freedom Day. Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported he denounced (with effrontery) a host of other countries for their lack of press freedom including China, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Russia, Belarus and Venezuela (all US targets for daring to place their own sovereignty above ours) saying "The United States values freedom of the press as one of the most fundamental political rights and as a necessary component of free societies" except whenever the press anywhere dares criticize his wars of aggression and other repressive, unjust and illegal policies. That's the way things are by the rules of George Bush's Global War on Terror (GWOT) rebranded The Long War about to undergo another rebranding because the current name denotes the wrong message of endless wars and occupation the public is tiring of. The name may change, but the mission won't so long as George Bush remains president. According to him, opposition to his wars gives aid and comfort to the nation's enemies that's tantamount to treason. So is dissent and any criticism of his agenda by his reasoning but not according to the law of the land.
3. Free speech restrictions are inevitable and prevent racial slurs. The Aff’s deployment of free speech ignores these cultural distinctions and marginalizes groups.
Stanley Fish, Duke University Professor of Law, 94
(http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-February-1998/fish.html)
In your work you have stated that free speech must be understood against a background of the originary exclusion which gives it meaning. What are the conditions giving rise to this originary exclusion? A: Before I got into the First Amendment or free speech business I was for many years and still am a teacher of English Renaissance poetry and prose, especially that of John Milton. Milton's contribution to the history of the discussion of free speech and censorship is of course the Areopagitica, published in 1643, a vigorous and eloquent protest against a licencing law passed by the parliament. Much of the Areopagitica is a celebration of toleration in matters of expression, for reasons that have now become more familiar to us: the more information the better able are we to choose wisely; the more information the better are we able to exercise our intellects so that they become more refined and perceptive. Another part of Milton's argument is that when something is suppressed it does not go away. It just takes on a romantic underground life and flourishes rather than being brought to the light of day where it might be refuted. All of these are today familiar arguments and components of free speech rhetoric. There is one part, however, of Milton's Areopagitica that is rarely noticed in such discussions and when noticed is noticed with some embarrassment. About three quarters of the way through the tract Milton says, "Now you understand of course", and the tone in his prose suggests that he assumes that most of his readers have always understood this, "that when I speak of toleration and free expression I don't mean Catholics. Them we extirpate". 1 Milton's admirers, especially those who have linked him to John Stuart Mill as one of the cornerstones of the free speech tradition, have difficulty with this passage and attempt to explain it away by saying that Milton, because of the limitation of his own historical period, was not able to see what we are able to see. The idea is that our conception of free speech is more capacious, more truly free, than this because we do not have an exclusion up our sleeves, ready to be sprung. But the difference between Milton and us is a difference in what we would exclude from the zone of "free speech", not a difference between exclusion and inclusion. When Milton names Catholic discourse as the exception to his toleration he does so because in his view Catholic speech is subversive of everything speech, in general, is supposed to do -- keep the conversation going, continue the search for Truth. In short, if speech is really to be free in the sense that he desires, Catholics cannot be allowed freely to produce it. This might seem paradoxical, but in fact it is Milton's recognition of a general condition: free speech is what's left over when you have determined which forms of speech cannot be permitted to flourish. The "free speech zone" emerges against the background of what has been excluded. Everyone begins by assuming what shouldn't be said; otherwise there would be no point to saying anything. Another example: one of the foremost proponents of free speech in this country is Nat Hentoff, a journalist well known for his jazz criticism and who has also taken up the cause of free speech no matter how disreputable or offensive the speech in question. But about two years ago he recanted, when he drew the line at campuses allowing certain forms of anti-semitic speech to flourish. Disciples of a certain Muslim group came to campuses and began to talk about "bagel eating vermin who had escaped from caves in the middle ages and were now, as then, infecting the world". Hentoff said this has gone too far. My point is that everyone has such a trigger point, which is either acknowledged at the beginning or emerges in a moment of crisis. There is no-one who believes that everything should be said. Most of us today would not say, "Well, of course, you understand I don't mean toleration of Catholics". But we would say things like, "I don't mean toleration of neo-nazis" or "I don't mean toleration of discourses advocating child molestation".
1. Democracy promotion fails—Oil prices
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme)
Second, the high price of oil and gas is bolstering the position of many non-democratic governments around the world, especially in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East but also in Africa and Latin America. Almost all oil-rich states outside Europe and North America are autocratic; the surge of oil and gas revenues they are currently enjoying is helping strengthen their hand at home. Moreover, some of these governments, particularly those in Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, are taking advantage of this revenue windfall to fund their own cross-border political work. They are passing money to political allies or favorites to help influence the domestic politics of nearby countries in ways they hope will be favorable to their own interests. More than almost any other single factor, a significantly lower price of oil would be a tremendous boost to the fortunes of democracy abroad.
2. Chinese success
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme)
Third, again for the first time since the end of the Cold War, democracy no longer enjoys an unchallenged place on the international scene as the only political system viewed as successful and credible. China’s continued economic success has elevated the “strong-hand” political approach to managing economic development as an attractive model in many parts of the developing world. Authoritarian leaders in the Middle East, Asia, and elsewhere justify their repressive tactics by citing the Chinese example. Citizens in some countries with poor development records show a willingness to sacrifice some of their freedoms for the possibility of better economic development. Although Russia’s recent economic growth is substantially due to high energy prices, President Putin’s has received much of the credit for it, bolstering his popularity and contributing to the growing appeal of the strong-hand political model.
3. Military abuses
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme)
Fourth, the status of the United States as a symbol of democracy and as a leading promoter of democracy has been greatly damaged by the abuses committed by U.S. military and intelligence personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere, as well as by other elements of the war on terrorism, such as the secret rendition of foreign terrorism suspects to countries that regularly practice torture, reliable reports of covert prisons in Europe, and governmental eavesdropping without court warrants within the United States. The damage to America’s image has been enormous, a fact that is plainly and painfully obvious to anyone who is internationally aware either abroad or at home, but which the administration refuses to acknowledge. The widespread perception that the war on terrorism entails the frequent violation of individuals’ rights by the U.S. government sharply contradicts President Bush’s efforts to tell the world that liberty is the best antidote for terrorism.
4. Terrorist Successes
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme)
Fifth, a narrower development, but one that goes to the heart of the U.S. push for democracy abroad, is the success of Islamist groups in two recent elections in the Middle East, in Egypt and the Palestinian territories. The surprisingly strong showing of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the victory of Hamas reopened old debates about whether democratization in the Middle East might actually be harmful to American interests by allowing Islamists parties or groups to come to power. Some commentators and some quiet voices in the U.S. government have reacted by urging the administration to retreat from its embrace of a democracy agenda for the Middle East. The United States now faces some very hard choices about whether to sacrifice its commitment to democracy for the sake of opposing political forces it believes are dangerous to U.S. interests.
5. Democratic transitions spark regional wars and ethnic conflicts
P.T. Zeleza, Director of the Center for African Studies, 5-18-7
(The Struggle for Human Rights in Africa, http://zeleza.com/blogging/african-affairs/struggle-human-rights-africa)
More difficult to decipher and quite contentious in the literature is the impact of democratization on human rights. It is generally agreed that democracies are less repressive than autocracies. The positive correlation between democracy and respect for human rights is based on the assumption that democratic leaders are more accountable to their citizens and that coercive agents within democratic states not only wield less power than other competitive groups, but the availability of less coercive means of conflict regulation (such as elections) provides both a constraining factor and a preferable option. But the effects of democratization (the moment of transition from autocracy to democracy) on political repression are more complex. It has been demonstrated in many instances that repression may actually increase in new democracies because of lagging repressive tendencies from the past and the propensity for protest behavior to increase at such times. Some call this the “more murder in the middle hypothesis. ” Many of these analyses tend to focus on the state as the progenitor of human rights terror and repression. The role of civil society in engendering human rights violations is quite critical and even more so during democratic transitions when centrifugal pressures can intensify as long suppressed group conflicts and identities find release in the newly opened political spaces where they sometimes proceed to produce and perform their chauvinisms and antagonisms, both real and imagined. Keen to shore up its power and authority the state often becomes embroiled in the volatile vortex of conflicting group claims and struggles, in the process of which repression can increase that may ultimately abort the democratization process itself or threaten the very integrity of the nation-state. Africa offers numerous examples of escalating conflicts and human rights violations since the recent wave of democratic transitions began in the 1990s. Ethnicity has proven particularly salient as the most lethal social cleavage engendering conflict and repression. Since colonial times, ethnicity has embodied both moral and political imperatives; moral ethnicity constitutes a complex web of social obligations, loyalties and belonging, whereas political ethnicity is manifested in the mobilization of ethnicity—the proverbial “tribalism”—in intra-elite struggles for state power. In the formulations of Peter Ekeh and Mahmood Mamdani ethnicity is integral to Africa’s bifurcated civil society; it serves as a primordial public for the masses estranged from the civic public of the elites, a sanctuary that extends its comforts and protective tentacles to the victims of political disenfranchisement, economic impoverishment, state terror and group rivalry. As the suffocating lid of state tyranny is lifted during moments of democratic transition the suppressed voices and expectations of civil society surge, but the stresses and strains arising from the competitive grind of democracy often find articulation in the entrenched identities, idioms, and institutions of ethnic solidarity. The case of Nigeria is quite illustrative in this regard. The democratic opening of 1999 has been accompanied by the resurgence of ethnic identities and proliferation of regional and local struggles over the entitlements of citizenship expressed in the language of “indigenes” and “settlers. ” These struggles have increasingly spilled into the formation of ethnic militias that have wrought havoc on Nigeria’s civil society, unleashing periodic convulsions of inter-communal violence. Long a country with a militarized state, the militias are militarizing society and helping to expand the culture of violence that is inimical to human rights and development. Religious conflicts have also periodically erupted into communal violence.
6. Don’t solve—Iraq and color revolutions
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme)
First, suspicion about and resistance to U.S. democracy promotion activities in developing countries and postcommunist countries is at an all-time high. Democracy building work has long been greeted with skepticism abroad by persons unsure about the true motivations of democracy promoters and wary of what sometimes appears to them as foreign-sponsored political interference. But a combination of two different developments in the past several years has greatly increased such negative attitudes around the world: • The Bush administration’s emphasis on the Iraq war as the leading wedge of its democracy promotion policy in the Middle East has closely associated democracy promotion with the assertion of American military power and security interests. With the U.S. intervention in Iraq viewed as illegitimate in most parts of the world, the legitimacy of the general concept of democracy promotion has suffered accordingly. • The recent “color revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan have also contributed to growing global unease about democracy promotion. The dramatic, inspiring political breakthroughs in these countries were an important advance for democracy. Yet as accounts of U.S. support for key civic and political opposition groups in these countries spread, so too did the incorrect but seductive idea that the United States was the shadowy guiding hand behind those events. Although these two developments—the Iraq war and the color revolutions—were unconnected, their coincidence has caused many authoritarian and semiauthoritarian governments to take a new, much harder look at U.S. democracy promotion activities on their territory. Many governments have started actively pushing back against democracy assistance, arguing that blocking such programs is necessary to defend their national security against what they portray as a United States bent on carrying out regime change against governments it does not like.
7. Russian backlash
Thomas Carothers, Director, Democracy and Rule of Law Project Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6-8-6
(Responding to the Democracy Promotion Backlash, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18416&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl,zme)
Although this new pushback against democracy promotion is occurring in many places, including Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the most concerted resistance is coming from Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has mounted a major campaign against Western democracy promotion, not only taking a series of punitive measures to limit the activities of Western democracy groups in Russia but also encouraging neighboring governments, especially those in Central Asia, to do the same. Non-democratic governments have often put up obstacles to democracy promotion. This is the first time since the Cold War, however, that a major government has made such a systematic and public campaign against democracy aid and worked across borders to enlist other governments in the cause. The fact that the campaign is originating not from a hostile government but from one of the United States’s G-8 partners is especially significant.
1. Plan ignores cultural distinctions turning gender violence
Joanna Crichton, African Population and Health Research Centre, 6-22-6
(Sexual and reproductive health rights in Africa, http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0140673606689034)
Subsequent discussion among participants explored the intersections and disconnections between the three dimensions. Examples from wide-ranging professional experience showed how the intersection between social and personal aspects of sexual and reproductive health rights is particularly crucial in Africa, in which such rights are often mediated by claimed cultural norms and beliefs and by household and community relationships that are influenced by gender. One government official noted how interventions aiming to empower women to negotiate over sex in western Kenya resulted in gender-based violence because the interventions failed to address social norms and expectations about the roles of men and women in sexual relationships. This discussion resonated with research findings from the region, which highlight how sexual and reproductive health rights are constrained by sexual identities, such as ideas about maleness and femaleness, which themselves are shaped by poverty.7, 8 and 9 Participants concluded that younger and older men should be involved in all research, advocacy, and action on sexual and reproductive health rights.
2. Women and men ignore health services
Ann K. Blanc, Principal Demographic Expert Macro International, 1
(The Effect of Power in Sexual Relationships on Sexual and Reproductive Health: An Examination of the Evidence,http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0039-3665%28200109%2932%3A3%3C189%3ATEOPIS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G)
Where men generally control resources and women's mobility, women may have difficulty using reproductive health services when they need them and, when they use such services, they may find it hard to make choices that are appropriate for their situation. This circumstance does not mean that men are purposely denying women health care. Their ignorance of women's reproductive health may lead them to have incorrect assumptions and to make uninformed decisions (Helzner 1996). One reason for men's ignorance is that their primary source of information is often other men, who are generally just as uninformed as they are (AVSC and IPPFI WHR 1998a). A study conducted in Uttar Pradesh, India, found that only about half of husbands surveyedcould name even one sign of a dangerous condition during pregnancy or childbirth. Moreover, many husbands surveyed with symptoms of STDs did not seek treatment. Presumably these men lack an awareness of the possible consequences of their disease to their wives (Singh et al. 1998). Researchers conducting an intervention in Ahmedabad, India, intended to involve men in early childhood development learned that the belief is widespread that women should not eat too much during pregnancy in order to have a small baby and hence an easier delivery. Those who control food allocation within the household (that is, husbands and mothersin- law), therefore, discourage pregnant women from eating, putting their health and the health of the baby at risk (Raju and Leonard 2000).
3. Property Rights guts solvency
Human Rights Watch, 3
(http://hrw.org/campaigns/women/property/)
Millions of women around the world suffer abuses of their equal rights to own, inherit, manage, and dispose of property. These violations are degrading, discriminatory, and sometimes deadly. After their property rights are violated, many women end up impoverished, struggling to meet their families’ basic needs, living in decaying shacks in dangerous slums, and vulnerable to violence and disease—including HIV/AIDS. In sub-Saharan Africa, violations of women’s property rights are severe and pervasive. The tragedy of these violations is magnified by HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, where the epidemic is raging and where 58 percent of those infected with HIV are women. In many African countries, women are excluded from inheriting, evicted from their lands and homes by in-laws, stripped of their possessions, and forced to engage in risky sexual practices in order to keep their property—all because they are women. When they divorce or separate from their husbands, they are frequently expelled from their homes with only their clothing. Married women can seldom stop their husbands from selling family property. Women who fight back are often beaten, raped, or ostracized. A number of factors contribute to these violations. Chief among them are discriminatory laws and customs, biased attitudes, unresponsive authorities, ineffective courts, and other obstacles, such as the social stigma of being branded “greedy women” or “traitors of custom” if women assert their property rights.
4. Acid Burning and Dowry Deaths
Amnesty International, 7
(http://www.amnestyusa.org/Womens_Human_Rights/Violence/page.do?id=1108440&n1=3&n2=39&n3=739)
Women's subjugation to men is pervasive in the political, civil, social, cultural, and economic spheres of many countries. In such societies, a woman who turns down a suitor or does not get along with her in-laws far too frequently becomes a victim of a violent form of revenge: acid burning. Acid is thrown in her face or on her body and can blind her in addition to often fatal third-degree burns. Governments do little to prevent the sale of acid to the public or to punish those who use it to kill and maim. Similarly, the ongoing reality of dowry-related violence is an example of what can happen when women are treated as property. Brides unable to pay the high "price" to marry are punished by violence and often death at the hands of their in-laws or their own husbands.
5. "Honor" Killings
Amnesty International, 7
(http://www.amnestyusa.org/Womens_Human_Rights/Violence/page.do?id=1108440&n1=3&n2=39&n3=739)
In some societies, women are often looked upon as representatives of the honor of the family. When women are suspected of extra-marital sexual relations, even if in the case of rape, they can be subjected to the cruelest forms of indignity and violence, often by their own fathers or brothers. Women who are raped and are unable to provide explicit evidence, are sometimes accused of zina, or the crime of unlawful sexual relations, the punishment for which is often death by public stoning. Such laws serve as a great obstacle inhibiting women from pursuing cases against those who raped them. Assuming an accused woman's guilt, male family members believe that they have no other means of undoing a perceived infringement of "honor" other than to kill the woman.
6. Dichotomies in human rights discourse means governments fail to protect rights
P.T. Zeleza, Director of the Center for African Studies, 5-18-7
(The Struggle for Human Rights in Africa, http://zeleza.com/blogging/african-affairs/struggle-human-rights-africa)
The contexts and conditions examined above make it quite difficult for the promotion and protection of human rights. The problematic nature of human rights is of course not confined to the practice of human rights, but is inherent in the very definition, the discourses of human rights. The tendency has been to divide human rights, to valorize some and dismiss others. I believe, quite strongly, that it is futile and unproductive to seal rights in strict confinements, to sequester them in dichotomies and polarities, for all forms of human rights are ultimately interrelated, interdependent, and indivisible. As I have noted at length elsewhere, human rights discourses often suffer from four analytical traps. They tend to be idealistic, legalistic, dualistic, and ethnocentric; idealistic in that human rights are reduced to ideas abstracted from social history, so that they are seen as the outcome of concepts not conflicts, insights not instigations, philosophy not politics; legalistic in that their provenance is primarily located in the courts not culture, procedure not practice, rhetoric not reality, codes not contingency; dualistic in that they either polarize or prioritize civil and political rights against economic and social rights and vice-versa; and ethnocentric in that their source is usually located in the West by both the universalists and relativists. The simple truth of the matter is that human rights have evolved out of concrete historical conditions and struggles, not simply textual or legal disputations, and they will continue to do so as human societies and needs change and new challenges and threats emerge, and there is no intrinsic reason that one set of rights—political and civil or economic and cultural rights—is inherently superior in promoting and protecting human dignity. In short, the internationalization and universalization of human rights is an ongoing process to which all world regions and cultures will continue to make contributions.